Segregation in Cities - Report Example

Segregation in the Segregation in Cities Introduction Residential segregation is a phenomenon which entails spatial concentration or separation of two or more groups into distinct neighbourhoods. This concept of population divide is not new. Over several years, various societies have been characterized by separation of the inhabitants occupying their settlement space depending on various criterions. The issues of racial discrimi8nation and ethnic segregation have deep roots n history (Doherty and Poole 1997). For this reason, some of the most common dimensions of segregation include ethnic or racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds and economic status. In other words, segregation in the cities can be described as the separation of individuals along the lines of their dissimilarities in some or all social sectors. This implies that populations may just be divided in their occupied space or their residences, in the school or even in the hospital and other social places. This paper seeks to evaluate if segregation in the cities is easy to measure and also examine the difficulties in examining this phenomenon. Measuring Segregation in the Cities It is conceivable that residential segregation is a multidimensional phenomenon which lies along various axes of measurements (Ondrich, et al1999). This implies that measuring segregation can easily be achieved through various mechanisms. The indices of measuring segregation in urban environments entail methodologies that are carefully constructed and controlled to compare different groups. There are five distinct indices of dissimilarities along which segregation can be measured (Massey and Denton 2006; Schelling 1971 and Phillips 2006). These axes include exposure, evenness, clustering, centralization and concentration. However, this does not eliminate the possibility of other classifications. Foremost, evenness is the difference in distribution of two or more population groups in a city. It is measured through scaling a group’s locality in relation to other groups. Therefore, it is measured by the comparison between the shares of every locality in the total population of the group and the share of the locality in relation to entire population along the index of dissimilarities (Johnston, Forrest and Poulsen 2002). The index of dissimilarities (ID) is often denoted as the segregation index. ID calculates the summery measure of how a group is spread across areas of residents compared with the rest of the populations (Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity2013). According to Massey and Denton (2006), ID ranges between 0 and 1.0 and ideally represents the section occupied by the minority groups that would be required to shift their area of residence to attain even distribution. Similarly, Peach (1996) argue that ID values a have a direct verbal meaning in that it represent the percentage of one of the groups being compared that would d have to shift their areas of residence in so as to replicate the spread of the other groups. Exposure is described as the levels of potential contact or the interaction between the majority and the minority in any geographic area of a city (Pacione 2009). Elements of exposure measure the degree of confrontation between the minority and the majority groups sharing common residential area. In the city set-up, the heights of minority exposure to the majority can be viewed in the context of neighbourhood (James & Taeuber 1985). In this case, the indices of exposure can be used to measure how the majority and the minority groups feel about the experiences of segregation. Evenness relies on the population size, residential exposure does not. It true to say that population may be evenly distributed but degree of exposure may be too low among the same (Allen and Turner 2005). Concentration measures the relative amount of space that is occupied by the minorities in city dwellings. In this instance, the more concentrated areas are also considered more segregated. Some groups occupy small areas of the total area of the city and are therefore described as concentrated. For instance, in the case where two cities, A and B have the same residential evenness and equal minority proportion, there would be no segregation since the dissimilarity index read 0 (Herbert and Thomas1997). However, if city A has few minority areas in a small area while B has several minority areas in large area of the total area occupied by the city, city A is considered more segregated than B. The ideology of concentration is embedded on the concept of racial discrimination in which ethnic minorities were pushed and forced to live in certain neighbourhoods that are quite distinct from the areas occupied by the majority groups (Johnston, Forrest and Poulsen 2002). Another dimension of .measuring segregation in the cities is the centralization. It refers to the spatial location of groups in relation to the centres of a city. While examining the population distribution of the US, Farley et al (1978) argue that centralization is major component that can be used to measure segregation an a city since the minorities were confined to live in peripheral or suburban areas and decline the city centres. Boal, (2002) observes that it is common characteristic to find ethnic and racial minorities in most industrialized nations concentrated in urban centres, where they occupy most substandard and oldest housing. Difficulties of Explaining Segregation measurement in the Cities According to Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (2013), both the meaning and the measurement of residential ethnic segregation have been politicized. However, in an analytical sense of view, the formula of measuring segregation in the cities is characterized by indices that would only be difficult to understand at glance. Carswell (2000) points it out that readers can easily understand the intents of the indices of dissimilarity. In this case, the indices of dissimilarity, which range from zero to one, show the distribution of the minority in relation to the majority occupying an area. It is also easy to understand that the indices of dissimilarity represent the population of the minority that would have to move to other areas in order to enhance evenness or integration. If the two groups, say black and whites occupy certain residential area in a city such that the blacks are the minority while the whites the majority, integration or segregation would be determined by the percentage derived from the indices of dissimilarities. A complete segregation is used to define a case where both groups live in entirely different areas. In this case, the index is equivalent to 1(Peach & Gale 2003). The only difficulty that would be experienced in this case is determining the percentage at which inhibition of an area in city environment is considered as more or less segregated. Conclusion This paper has demonstrated that there are wide range of mechanism tat can easily be used to measure segregation. Various tools such as evenness, clustering, centralization and concentration can be employed to measure segregation in the cities. All these tools are used to compare the population distribution of minority and the majority in city environments. However, there is a disagreement with conceptualization of the ideology that measuring segregation in urban centres is difficult to explain. In this case, the paper has indicated that such impression only develop if the reader views the indices of dissimilarities for the first time. However, there is no special education required to understand the intents of measuring segregation in any population set up. All the tools used in measuring segregation have indices that represent the percentage of the segregated population in relation to the majority. List of Reference Allen, J P & Turner, E (2005) ‘Ethnic residential concentrations in United States metropolitan areas’, Geographical Review 95 (2), 267-285 Boustan, L. P, 2011, Racial residential segregation in American Cities Retrieved from on February, 2015, from http://www.econ.ucla.edu/lboustan/research_pdfs/research13_handbook.pdf Boal, F.W. (2002). Belfast: Walls Within. Political Geography, 21, (5): 687-694. Carswell, A 2000, Measuring Segregation in new Castle County, Delaware, Retrieved from on February, 2015, from http://www.housingeducators.org/Journals/H&S_Vol_27_No_2_Measuring_Segregation_in_New_Castle_County_Delaware.pdf Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (2013) Ethnic mixing in Manchester: available at http://www.ethnicity.ac.uk/medialibrary/briefings/localdynamicsofdiversity/ethnic-mixing-in-manchester.pdf Doherty, P. and Poole, M.A. (1997). Ethnic residential segregation in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Geographical Review, 87, (4): 520-536. Farley, R, Schuman, H, Bianchi, S, Colasanto, D, Hatchet, S 1978, “Chocolate City Vanilla Suburbs, Will the Trend towards Racially Separate Communities Continue”, Social Science Research, Vol. 7 pp319-344. Herbert, D. & Thomas, C. (1997) Cities In Space: City as Place London, Fulton Press. James D.R & Taeuber K E 1985, Measure of Segregation. In Social Methodology 1985, Edited by Tuna N.B pp 1-32, San-Francisco, Jossey-Base. Johnston, R., Forrest, J. and Poulsen, M. (2002) Are there ethnic enclaves/ghettos in English cities? Urban Studies 39, 591–618 Massey, D.S & Denton, N.A, 1988, ‘The Dimension of Residential Segregation’, Social Forces, vol. 67 (2) pp 281-315. Ondrich, J Stricker, A and Yinger, J. 1999, “Do Landlords Discriminate? The Incidence and Causes of Racial Discrimination in Rental Housing Markets.” Journal of Housing Economics 8:185–204. Pacione, M. (2009) Urban Geography: A Global Perspective 3rd edition, London: Rutledge. Peach, C. (1996) Does Britain have ghettoes? TIBG, 21.1 http://www.jstor.org/discover/622934?sid=21105085846491&uid=2&uid=4 Peach, C & Gale, R (2003) ‘Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in the new religious landscape of England’, Geographical Review 93 (4), 469-490 Phillips, D. (2006) Parallel lives? Challenging discourses of British Muslim self-segregation, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, 25 – 40 Schelling, T.C 1971, “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology1 pp143–186. Read More